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I am not familiar with your particular filters, but generally I would say to improve a HOB, you want to remove carbon, and replace any cartridges with free-flowing or bagged biomedia or filter sponge. A pre-filter (a sponge filter sponge) over the intake will also greatly improve the available surface for the good bacteria and will protect your fish from getting sucked up into the filter, although you will need to give the sponge a good squeezing weekly to keep the flow from slowing down too much.

I have a Aqua-tech 30-60 Filter and a Whisper 60 Filter. ... I want to save up for a canister eventually, but for now this is what I got

Since that's what you have, optimizing them is the grail.
Both use cartridges that can be dismantled, and have standard filter pad material or polyester quilt batting wrapped around the frames. Of course, you'd always include some of the old filter material in the sandwich, to help transfer the beneficial bacteria to the new material.

^I use those in a bunch of filters and they work great. One of my local shops even carries the frames. It also makes it easy to add carbon when you need it because you can have some of the refills hanging out and ready to go.

Stop wasting your money on activated charcoal (carbon.) Except for removing Meds or a few other very specific reasons (like removing a known complex organic from the tap water that charcoal is known to absorb), this substance does zero for the aquarium fish.

Knowledge is fun(damental)

A 75 gal with eight Discus, fake plants, and a lot of wood also with sand substrate. Clean up crew is down to just two Sterba's Corys. Filters: continuous new water flow; canister w/UV, in-tank algae scrubber!! Finally, junked the nitrate removal unit from hell.

Yea, I've seen the aquaclears, but figured if I'm gonna buy one of those why not save for a canister ;)

The aqua-tech is a walmart Hob filter, once my cycle has been stable for a bit I want to go in and cut out the carbon, out the the aqua-tech pads (they are built it, which sucks)

The whisper is nice, you just pour the carbon in, but I'm going to use bio-max instead, figure that will last a lot longer.

I currently and using pantihose over the filter intakes, the aquatech filter has a pyramid shaped intake, so most pre-filters didn't fit over it. The pantihose were cheap and seem to be doing a great job

You can take an older cartridge, cut out all the filter media and attach a 1/4" thick piece of sponge media to the frame and reinsert it. This turns your HOB into a high-powered sponge filter. All you have to do afterwards is the usual rinsing out in tank water. I use small pieces of SS wire to attach the sponge with.

I do as Dave does but I gut my filters out and add a foam block and biomax. You'd have to remove only one cartridge for now and add foam to that area and once that's seeded, add more foam to the area where the second cartridge is so all your bacteria is not gone at once. I use this foam.

You can wet it, freeze it and cut it easier with an electric knife to size.